Behind the Scenes in My Online Business
I use a couple of Access databases to run my business, and things usually go smoothly. Recently though, an error appeared when I clicked a button on the Main Menu form. The button was supposed to open a data entry form, and had worked perfectly for years. This time though, the other form didn’t open, and an Access Expression On Click Error appeared.
Continue reading “Access Expression On Click Error for Form Button”
You probably get lots of email messages, and a good portion of those have links in them. Maybe a co-worker wants you to look at an online article, or a client sends you a link to check.
I get lots of emails like that, so it was alarming to get this message in Outlook recently, when I clicked a link.
Recently, I’ve heard from a couple of people who were getting strange errors in Excel, when they tried to get data from an Access database. In both cases, things had been going smoothly for a long time, then suddenly stopped working. What was going wrong?
These Excel errors were different from the Read Only database problem that I wrote about before.
Continue reading “Excel Errors With Access Database”
I’ve been working on a client’s database, in Microsoft Access, and one of the data entry forms has several fields for dates and times.
There’s a nice Date Picker feature that shows a calendar icon, if you click in a date field text box. Click that icon, and a popup calendar appears, so you can select a date, instead of typing it.
Today I solved a nagging problem with an Access database, so I’ll share the solution here, in case it helps someone else.
In an Access database that I built, there is a Login form, where the users select their name from a drop down list.
Then, when they click OK, the Login form is hidden, and a data entry form opens.
The Login form stays open in the background, and other forms and queries can hook into the ID for the selected user name.
Everything works well, except when I open the data entry form in design view, to make changes. Then, without warning, the Login form closes. The user ID isn’t available to any of the other forms, and I have to go back to the Login, and select a name again.
This is more of an annoyance than a serious problem, but I wanted to figure out why it was happening.
I put breakpoints all through the code, and stepped through, to find out when the Login form closed. Was there something in the code that was making it shut down? Nothing turned up in the code, so I was left scratching my head.
The SubForm Did It
Finally, it dawned on me that the Login form and the Data Entry form both used the same subform – it holds the logo, at the top left.
The Logo subform saves space in the database, because the image is only in there once. It also makes it easy to make global changes, if the logo or heading text changes.
When I opened the data entry form in Design View, the Logo subform was also in Design View.
The hidden Login form closed because it couldn’t show the Logo in form view, while the Logo was in Design View on another form.
To solve the problem, I created a copy of the Logo form, and named it Logo2. On the Login Form, I changed the subform to Logo2. Now, there is no conflict when I open the Data Entry form in Design View, so the hidden Login form stays open.
Maybe this will help you, if you have Access forms that mysteriously close, without being told to.
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A couple of weeks ago, due to some computer problems, I set up a new copy of Outlook 2010 on my laptop.
I’ve used Outlook for many years, starting with Outlook 98, I think. Usually I copy the old Outlook files to a new machine, or upgrade over an existing version, but this time I was starting fresh.
In the past, I’ve had one or more folders for each client, plus dozens of other folders for website related emails, personal correspondence, newsgroup follow-up, and anything else I could think of.
This time, I’m keeping it simple. In addition to the built in folders that Outlook has, I’ve only created 3 folders for my mail:
The underscores keep my folders above the other Outlook folders, so they’re easy to find. So far, it’s working well. I don’t have to think about filing, or wonder which subfolder I stored an email in. To find something in the Business folder, I can sort by name, or date, or use the filter or search tools.
How about you? Is your Outlook folder system simple, or complex?
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When I tried to open one of my main Access databases today, I got the alarming message, “The database ‘MyData’ is read-only. You won’t be able to save changes made to data or object definitions in this database.”
I closed it, and tried to open it again, making sure that I hadn’t accidentally selected the Read Only option.
A Google search turned up some dire warnings that this could be a sign of corruption, so I created a new database, imported all the tables, queries, forms, and everything else, and all seemed well.
So, I renamed the old version, and gave the new version the same name as the previous one, so my Windows Explorer shortcuts and connections would work.
As soon as I opened the new copy of the database, the “read-only”problem was back. So, I decided to look for “.ldb” files.
When an Access database is open, it automatically creates an ldb file. This file has the same name as the database, with an “.ldb” or “.laccdb” extension. Later, when the database closes, that ldb file is automatically deleted.
Sometimes those ldb files don’t get deleted, when a database closes, and that can cause problems.
So, I looked for errant ldb files, that were mistakenly telling the database someone else had it open. There was nothing.
Finally, it dawned on me — connections could be the problem.
I had an Excel file open, and it queried the database, so maybe that was the problem. I closed the Excel , re-opened the database, and it worked fine.
Later, if I tried to open the database when the Excel file was open, the database was read only.
Well, I don’t have the two files (Excel and Access) open simultaneously too often, but I wanted to have that option available.
So, I checked the connection strings for the queries and found that they included this setting:
I changed the setting to this instead:
and the files now live in harmony (so far).
To find the connection strings in Excel:
This information is probably of no interest to you, unless you landed here in a Google search for this error message:
But, one day in the future, I might run into this error again, and maybe I’ll find my own solution when I do a Google search.
Don’t laugh — it’s happened to me before! (more than once!)
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I’ve had some strange problems with Outlook for the past couple of weeks
Probably the Outlook file was getting pretty big, so I deleted a bunch of messages, and compacted the Personal Folder. The Outlook.pst file was reduced to about half its previous size, but some of the problems persist.
Today I wanted to delete a subfolder that I don’t need, and even though the folder is empty, an Outlook showed a message said the folder was full, and couldn’t be deleted. Or maybe I didn’t have the correct permissions, and should check with the Administrator. Well, I’m the Administrator, and have permission to do whatever I want!
Google showed me how to get rid of that folder though.
If you’ve run into a similar problem, I hope this works for you too.
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